by Peter Howe
“Sounds like a coward’s way out to me,” Olang muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” snarled Tazar.
“Nothing, Father. Nothing.”
Waggit was shocked by this exchange. He had never heard Tazar speak to his son in such a stern manner. From the stunned silence that followed he assumed that none of the other team members had either. After the gathering broke up, Waggit and Lowdown went back to Lowdown’s tree. The old dog liked to rest before the evening meal, and often he and Waggit would spend the time talking about this and that. The first topic that afternoon was Tazar scolding Olang.
“I’ve never heard him be that sharp with Olang before,” Waggit remarked. “I’ve never heard him give Olang anything but praise.”
“Lately I’ve noticed a slight change in his attitude toward his son,” said Lowdown. “Sometimes—not often—he gets irritated with him. It’s probably your fault, you know.”
“My fault?” exclaimed Waggit. “How can it possibly be my fault?”
“You’re right,” agreed Lowdown. “Fault’s the wrong word. But you’re the reason he’s looking at Olang in a different light. Now that you’re back Tazar’s got someone to compare him to, and next to you he don’t look too good.”
“You really think so?” Waggit was incredulous.
“I really do,” said Lowdown, “and I’ll tell you something else. Olang may not be the sharpest tooth in the mouth, but he knows it too, and don’t think he ain’t gonna try and get back at you for it. He knows you’re a threat to him, not just for his father’s affections, but also for the leadership of the team.”
“The leadership?” Waggit spluttered. “I’m not going to be the leader. Whatever put that in your head?”
“You’re a natural leader,” Lowdown assured him. “I know it, the team knows it, and Olang knows it too.”
Waggit was dumbfounded.
“I just hope for once in your life you’re wrong, Lowdown,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” The old dog chuckled. “But in this case I don’t think so.”
Over the next few days Olang behaved as Lowdown predicted. Everything came to a head one afternoon when, once again, Felicia was the bearer of bad news.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but there’s been another attack in this area,” she told the assembled team.
“Another half-roller?” asked Tazar.
“Indeed,” she confirmed.
“And do they have a description of the dog who did it?” asked Olang.
“Well—yes—actually I believe they do,” said Felicia uncomfortably.
“Will you share it with us?” persisted Olang.
“I believe, from what I’ve heard, that the dog—well, it seems that the dog involved in the attack was white,” Felicia went on, as if every word she uttered gave her pain.
“How interesting,” said Olang as he turned toward Waggit.
The other dogs followed his lead until all eyes were staring in disbelief at the white dog. Tazar stood to his full imposing height and walked over to Waggit.
“Tell me it’s not true,” he said quietly, and with sadness in his voice.
“It’s not true,” Waggit replied calmly, and with as much composure as possible.
“Well,” Olang said with a sigh, “I don’t see any other white dogs around here, do you?”
Indeed nobody knew of another white dog or could ever remember there being one among the free dogs. There were plenty of pets with that coloring, but it was unlikely that they would be attacking cyclists in the Deepwoods.
“You are somewhat distinctive,” said Tazar. “If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”
“I don’t know, but ask yourself this, Tazar. Why would I attack Uprights?” said Waggit. “You think I have too soft a spot for them anyway.”
“Maybe,” Olang speculated, “in some twisted way Waggit thought he was proving his loyalty to the team, that he could be trusted, that he wasn’t a spy for the Uprights. He may have done it even though, Father, you yourself said any dog caught attacking an Upright would be exiled.”
Waggit began to panic.
“It’s not true, it really isn’t. I didn’t do anything. Felicia, why did you tell them that? Why couldn’t you have kept it to yourself?”
“Waggit, the team would have found out anyway,” she said with regret in her voice. Waggit looked wildly around at the staring eyes. He knew that going to pieces wouldn’t help him, but he couldn’t control his fear and anger.
“It wasn’t me, I swear it. Please believe me, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
He stopped, his body shaking with terror. He knew that if Tazar didn’t believe that he was innocent the black dog had the power to send him away from his friends, from his home, from everything for which he had journeyed back to the park. However much the other dogs liked him, none of them would disobey the leader. That was the law by which they lived.
“I didn’t do it,” he cried, “and you can’t prove that I did.”
“No,” said Tazar. “You’re right; we cannot prove it. But if you are innocent you have nothing to be scared of, and yet you are scared. What, then, is making you so fearful?”
“Because I know you don’t believe me,” Waggit replied, “and because I know that Olang is trying…”
He got no further, but was interrupted by a roar from Tazar.
“Enough about Olang,” he bellowed. “Everything bad that happens cannot be blamed on Olang, and I will not tolerate you sowing the seeds of dissension among us. I am not only beginning to doubt your honesty but your motives as well. Olang will be the leader of this team, and if you cannot live with that you cannot live with us. Give me one good reason why I should not banish you now.”
A gasp of shock ran through the dogs, and silence fell upon the scene. Then, from the edge of the woods, came a soft but clear voice.
“Tazar, I think I can give you that reason.” It was Alona, and behind her stood one of her loner friends, keeping in the shadows, nervous and apprehensive.
“Come forward, Alona,” said Tazar. “Tell us your reason.”
“This is one of the loners what lives at the far end of the Deepwoods.” She indicated the animal accompanying her. He looked backward and forward at everyone, the whites of his eyes showing and his ears flat to his head.
“I brought him here because he told me something that at first I didn’t understand, but it makes perfect sense now.”
“And that is?” asked Tazar.
“He witnessed the attack on the Upright, the one on the half-roller.” A murmur passed through the team.
“According to him,” Alona continued, “it was a white dog what done the attack—but it weren’t Waggit.”
“Then who?” asked Tazar.
“One of Tashi’s new team. He got to the park only a few risings ago. He’s an evil piece of work by all accounts, and he’s pure white,” she replied.
“Are you sure of this?” Tazar asked the loner.
“Oh yes, sir, absolutely sure, your honor,” he replied, quivering the whole time.
“But that’s not the most interesting part,” continued Alona. “The bit what I find strange is that just before the attack he saw another dog urging the white dog on.”
“Do you know the other dog?” asked Tazar.
“Yes, your highness, I’m afraid I do,” the loner answered.
“Then tell us who it was,” demanded Tazar.
“It was your son, sir. It was Olang.”
There was a bellow from Olang, who sprang forward, his fangs bared, causing Alona to scuttle back into the shadows next to her informant.
“That’s a lie,” snarled Olang. “That’s a dirty, stinking lie!”
“If I find out that it’s true,” warned Tazar, “I will banish you, even though you are my flesh and blood. If you’ve been conspiring with Tashi or one of his dogs, you cannot be trusted to live among us.”
“I just told you it
’s not true,” insisted Olang. “Why would you believe a loner over me?”
“In all the years I’ve been in this park,” replied his father, “I have never known a loner to lie. They have no need to. They gain nothing from untruths.”
“Well, you just met the first one that lies,” growled Olang, his eyes narrowed and foam forming at the corners of his mouth. “Go to Silver Tree Bend and see if you can find one paw mark that looks like mine, just one. I challenge you.”
Tazar looked at his son, and the dogs could see the hurt in his eyes.
“Olang, if you weren’t there, how do you know the attack took place at Silver Tree Bend?”
“She said that’s where it was.” Olang nodded toward Felicia. “That Upright hag said so.”
“No, Olang,” said Felicia. “I never mentioned it.”
“Well, it must’ve been that loner deadbeat you took in, that Alona.” For the first time Olang was beginning to look scared rather than outraged.
“Nobody but you mentioned Silver Tree Bend,” said Tazar. “Nobody but you knew.”
Olang looked around at the dogs who surrounded him. His aggressive stance changed as he saw their hostility toward him, and he tried to act unconcerned.
“Okay, so maybe I did have a little chat with Tashi. Is that a crime?” he asked. “He’s not such a bad fellow. I think if you got to know him better, Pa, you’d find you have many things in common.”
“I have known Tashi longer than you’ve been alive,” growled Tazar, “and I know that he’s pure evil and that he turns everything he touches and everyone he knows into evil.”
“Well, one thing you don’t have in common is that, evil or not, he’s prepared to take the fight to the Uprights. He knows you have to fight for what’s rightfully yours. He’s not afraid of them.”
Tazar ignored the implications of this last remark.
“What worries me most,” he said with a sigh, “is not that you have been consorting with our bitter enemy, but that you have tried to turn us from your brother here with your scheming, and you would have caused me to make a terrible mistake had it not been for sister Alona.”
“You can’t blame me for trying to get rid of him.” Olang scowled. “Ever since he came back it’s been Waggit this and Waggit that. Waggit’s such a good hunter. Waggit has such good ideas. Waggit’s a natural leader. I’m sick of hearing about Waggit. I’m your son, Pa, your own kin, and yet you seem to care more about him than me. I’m going to be leader of this team, not him. You promised me.”
“Not only will you not be leader of this team,” said Tazar solemnly, “you will not even be a member of it. From now on I banish you from our realm. You will live the life of a loner until you see the error of your ways. If you truly repent, then we will consider having you back, but that will be many risings from now.”
“You cannot banish me,” roared Olang. “It is I that banish you and your pathetic group of losers. From now on you have no son, unless of course,” he sneered, “you adopt the saintly Waggit.”
He glared at his father with anger in his eyes, turned his back on him, and walked away. As he got to the others he snarled at them with contempt. They parted to let him through and he disappeared into the woods.
22
Triumph and Tragedy
Olang’s departure and the resurgence of Tashi with his new team were the main topics of discussion among the Tazarians in the days that followed. If Tazar was upset by his son’s banishment he didn’t show it.
“He must be feeling terrible about exiling Olang,” Waggit said to Lowdown during one of their afternoon conversations, “but he just carries on like nothing happened.”
“Don’t be fooled by that,” Lowdown assured him. “Tazar always said being a leader comes before everything else. That don’t mean he ain’t hurtin’ though.”
Tazar was now depending more and more on Waggit, almost as if he had taken to heart Olang’s sarcastic suggestion that he adopt the white dog. He didn’t have a lot of time to fret about his wayward boy, because much of his attention was taken up by worrying about the reemergence of Tashi.
“I heard that one of the kitchen workers at the restaurant was badly bitten trying to shoo away some Tashinis from the Dumpsters,” Felicia reported one day. “This is the third attack in as many weeks, and everyone is saying that something has to be done about the wild dogs.”
“The reason that creature is dangerous,” said Tazar, referring to Tashi, “is because he’s so stupid. He’s all muscle and no mind, and he’s making life for the rest of us more precarious than it needs to be.”
“What can we do?” asked Waggit.
“The first thing we’ve got to do is find out the location of his camp,” replied Tazar. “We can’t make plans until we know where he is.”
And so the team spent a lot of time trying to track down Tashi’s hideout, but as so often happens, in the end they found it by accident. Waggit, Cal, Raz, and Magica were hunting one morning. Their prey was a rabbit, but it was young and fast, so they chased it longer and farther than they would have normally. The pursuit even took them across the road that went around the inside of the park. Fortunately it was closed to traffic at the time, although Magica nearly collided with a cyclist.
Coming down a hill where the Deepwoods gave way to more open ground, Waggit stopped dead in his tracks so suddenly that the others who were following nearly crashed into him, while the rabbit fled into the undergrowth.
“Whassup?” asked Cal.
“Quietly,” said Waggit. “Look down there.”
The other three dogs followed Waggit’s gaze, and there, next to a large clump of bushes, were Tashi and Wilbur, their heads together, talking to each other intently. They were unaware that they were being watched when, out of the bushes, came a third dog, a sad-looking specimen, malnourished, with a scruffy coat and half of his left ear missing. Tashi snarled at him, and he cowered away in fear and lay on the ground looking up at his leader. As he did so he caught sight of the spies on the hill out of the corner of his eye and alerted Tashi, who whirled around and started to walk menacingly toward them.
“Let’s go,” said Waggit. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
The four of them fled back the way they came. When they arrived at the pipe they had to rest for a while to regain their breath before they could tell Tazar what had happened. They finally stopped panting enough to be able to describe Tashi’s camp and its location.
“Still living in bushes, huh?” said Tazar. “That’s pathetic. You’d think after what happened he would’ve learned his lesson.”
It was true that Tashi’s old camp had also been in the bushes. These provided adequate shelter during the summer, when the canopy of leaves kept out most of the weather, but their biggest disadvantage was that they were difficult to defend. Both the tunnel and now the pipe, after its recent renovations, had escape routes of which a potential attacker would be unaware until it was too late.
“What’re you gonna do, boss?” asked Lowdown, who had been listening to the hunters tell their tale.
“He has to go,” Tazar answered, “and this time he’s got to go for good.”
“One on one,” said Lowdown, “or team against team?”
“One on one,” replied Tazar, “but I want the team with me.”
“When d’you want to do it?” asked Waggit.
“There’s no time like the present,” said Tazar, “and we know he’s home.”
He organized the team, ordering Lowdown, Gruff, and Alicia to remain and look after the pipe. Waggit went to the willow tree to find Felicia, to warn her about what was happening and tell her to stay away. This was going to be strictly for dogs. When he got there Lug was all by himself.
“Where’s Felicia?” he asked Lug.
“Dunno,” Lug replied. “She went off a while ago and told me to stay here.”
“Well,” said Waggit, “it’s for the best; she’d be upset by the tussle.”
&n
bsp; “By the what?” said Lug nervously.
“The tussle,” said Waggit. “We’re going to tussle with Tashi.”
“When you say we…” Lug’s voice trailed off.
“Don’t worry,” said Waggit, “not you, and not me, either. Tazar’s taking on Tashi, and we have to be there to back him up. Come on.”
With the look on his face of someone who really did not want to be doing what he was doing, Lug reluctantly followed Waggit back to the pipe. When they got there the rest of the team was ready to set out. They did so silently but determinedly, moving at a steady pace toward the spot where Waggit and the others knew Tashi’s camp to be. Instead of coming down the hill that the hunters had taken, they went by an alternate route that brought them onto the flat open ground in front of the bushes that were the rival team’s home. Tazar moved ahead of the others and stood by himself.
“Tashi,” he shouted in his deepest, most resonant voice, “get your miserable, petulant body out here.”
“Well, well, well, visitors. How nice. I thought we might be having visitors.”
It was Tashi’s voice all right, but it was not coming from the bushes. Tazar and the team whirled around to see Tashi and a bedraggled group of dogs, including one very white one, standing on a rock halfway up the hill from which the hunters had first seen him.
“Okay, Tashi,” said Tazar, “your time’s up. You and me, now.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” sneered Tashi. “Maybe before I decide I should consult with my newest recruit.”
He moved to one side to reveal Olang standing behind him with a smirk on his face and half of his left ear missing. Upon seeing his son Tazar froze, and at the same time Tashi launched himself off the rock with a snarl. He landed in front of the still paralyzed Tazar and was just about to pounce when Waggit jumped into the fray.
He leapt at Tashi, his teeth bared, and made contact with his hard, muscled shoulder. Tashi howled in pain, spun around, and threw his full weight at him. Waggit’s slender body was made for speed, not for fighting, and it was immediately apparent that he was hopelessly outclassed by the tough, strong dog. Tashi soon had him on his back and Waggit could hear his opponent’s teeth snapping together as he tried to go for his throat. He knew that if those powerful jaws ever got around his neck he would be dead, and he desperately clawed at Tashi’s body in a futile attempt to get him off.
